Shawnigan mom of 3 searching for kidney donor Cowichan Bulldogs blow out Victoria Spartans
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Friday, November 22, 2013
Man hit by car on highway dies SARAH SIMPSON CITIZEN
Meryle Hilberry, past Cowichan Hospital Foundation board chair, gives a cheery thumb’s up to her group’s latest project: raising $50K to help clear some of the bottlenecks in the emergency care section of the hospital, offering everyone better service in the busy facility. [LEXI BAINAS/CITIZEN]
ER Fast Track ‘critically needed’: campaign LEXI BAINAS CITIZEN
This week saw the start of a $50,000 appeal by the Cowichan District Hospital Foundation to get people in and out of the Emergency Room faster. The annual project this year is an Emergency Room – Fast Track program, a first for community hospitals in the Island Health region. At CDH, the ER is perpetually crowded with ER patients endur-
ing ever-lengthening wait times as the region’s population grows, which makes this a timely project, according to Foundation chair Brian Payne. “We’ve reached quite a high volume area, especially with the closure in the last couple of years of the Silverfern Clinic and a couple of doctors in Lake Cowichan relocating their practices. The ER becomes the adjunct doctor’s office for the Valley,” he said.
A Fast Track area in emergency will provide a specific space to treat the lower acuity patients so that they can be cared for more promptly. By constructing a new space within ER and with medical equipment to support the patients and attending medical staff, the hospital is confident it can provide a quicker, highquality response service for the patients that aren’t as desperate and who currently wait in triage,
sometimes for hours. “The idea is, not to make light of somebody with a child that’s hacking and coughing, to not mix all the priority and non-priority stuff up. The politics of the ER waiting room are never perfect and nobody likes to sit and wait but by all accounts this is going to make a big difference,” Payne said. The idea is based on what’s See Should be ready • page 3
War mland House resident Jimmy Galbrait, 55, died at Victoria General Hospital Tuesday evening. A vehicle struck Galbrait around 7:20 p.m. on Monday night while he was attempting to cross the Trans Canada Highway just north of the James Street crosswalk. “I went down and identified him,” said Warmland House staffer Jeff Sherman on Wednesday. “They had no idea who he was. He was a John Doe.” Sherman and another shelter worker sat with the surgeon who explained the extent of Galbrait’s injuries: massive trauma including shattered legs and ribs — all made worse by a heart attack during surgery. “They told us, his way of life if he survived would be totally worse,” Sherman said. “He wouldn’t be able to get out of bed.” Galbrait was already disabled, having suffered a stroke many years ago. He moved into one of the specially designed accessible suites at Warmland House about six months after the facility opened. “He was a grumpy little person,” See Galbrait had • page 4
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